Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Experience
The iced oat latte is sweating through the paper sleeve on the table between us, and Lila twists her engagement ring back and forth while she asks. We just got back from our first big trip to Portugal, and we’re already booking a long weekend in Mexico next spring. Everyone keeps saying we should just go ahead and start trying now, but… should I wait to get pregnant after a couple more vacations?
I recognize that tight, confused look on her face. Five years ago, I was sitting in that exact same spot, just a few months married, with two non-refundable trips booked: a 10-day hiking trek in Patagonia we’d spent two years saving for, and a week at my grandma’s old lake cabin in northern Wisconsin that we’d planned to do nothing at all. All the older women at my church brought it up over potlucks. My aunt pulled me aside at a cousin’s wedding to mutter that I was “wasting my good fertile years” on beaches instead of babies. My midwife even asked if I was sure I wanted to push back starting trying for 18 whole months.
I said yes anyway.
We packed our hiking boots and flew to Patagonia, and on day three we got caught in a sudden ice storm halfway up a trail. My husband slipped into a mud pit that came up to his thigh, and we laughed so hard I couldn’t catch my breath, even as my fingers went numb and we had to huddle under a rock for an hour waiting for the storm to pass. If I’d been pregnant, I would have stayed back at the lodge. First trimester fatigue would have kept me in bed, and no doctor would have signed off on a high-altitude hike that far from a major hospital anyway. That trip would have existed only as a canceled line item on a spreadsheet, or a boring week of me napping on the couch while my husband went without me.
A month later, we spent that week at the cabin. We slept in until 10 a.m. every day, drank cold beer on the porch at noon, read entire novels without anyone pulling on our shirt asking for goldfish crackers. We drove around the back roads looking for wild blueberries, and didn’t set a single alarm for seven straight days. That’s the part no one talks about when you’re debating waiting. It’s not just about being able to drink wine on the beach or go zip-lining, though those things are nice. It’s about getting to have one last stretch of time where your life is only yours, before it expands to include someone who needs every part of you.
I did have the what-if panic, though. After we got back, it took me nine months to get pregnant. For a couple of those months, I stayed up at night replaying the decision, wondering if I’d messed up, if that 18 month wait was the reason we were struggling. I wondered if I’d chosen mud and blueberries over a baby, and I’d ruined everything. When I finally got that positive test, I cried more from relief than joy, at first.
Now I have a three-year-old who chases seagulls down the beach and insists on carrying her own backpack (even if it’s twice the size of her torso) on every walk. We go on vacations every year, and they’re fun in a totally new way. But they’re not the same as those trips we took before she was here. Last summer, we spent three days at that same lake cabin, and we were up at 6:30 every morning building stick forts and pulling leeches out of her bathing suit after she snuck into the water. I wouldn’t trade that for anything, but I also wouldn’t trade the week I had there just with my husband, before all that.
I’ve thought a lot about what I tell people who ask Lila’s question now, and it’s never just a yes or no. It comes down to a few concrete things I’ve learned, that you can actually act on. If you’re over 35 or you already know you have fertility issues, don’t wait a full year for two vacations. Go get a quick checkup with your doctor first, talk through your timeline, and see if you can adjust your plans instead of pushing back trying entirely. If your trips are already paid for, non-refundable, and you’re under 35 with no red flags, take them. First trimester nausea and exhaustion is so common, and you don’t want to waste a trip you saved years for feeling too sick to get out of your hotel room. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re using the vacations as an excuse to put off starting because you’re scared? That’s okay too. Just name that. Waiting a little to get used to the idea of parenthood isn’t selfish, and you don’t have to hide behind the trip to buy yourself that time.
I don’t buy the line that you’ll just get to do all those trips again once your kids are grown. Maybe you will, but it won’t be the same version of you, the same version of your relationship, that gets to go. There’s no shame in wanting that memory for yourself, before you add the beautiful chaos of a kid to the mix. I also don’t buy that anyone who starts trying right away is making a mistake. Some people are ready, and rescheduling a dream trip feels worse than waiting, and that’s fine too.
Lila texted me three days after our coffee. She and her partner went to their OB, did the basic fertility checkup, and everything came back clear. They’re going on their Mexico trip next spring, and then they’ll start trying after they get home. She said it feels like the right call, even though her mom keeps sending her links to “best fertility foods for new moms” articles every other day. I sent her two photos back: one of my daughter covered in vanilla ice cream from our last trip, and one of my husband, still grinning, covered in that Patagonia mud. I told her there’s no perfect answer. Some people start right away and build amazing family vacations for decades. Some people wait and have a little extra stress getting pregnant, but still wouldn’t trade the time they had. It only matters if it’s the choice you make for you, not the choice everyone else tells you to make.
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